DNR Seeks to build 500+ acre shooting range

[DeanC]

Shooting range in DNR sights

The Department of Natural Resources is searching for a metro site to build a massive shooting complex that could help stem the decline in hunting in the state.

Does the metro area have 530 acres for a $22 million mega-sized shooting complex? The state Department of Natural Resources is about to find out.

The DNR has invited metro cities, counties, townships and park boards to offer possible sites by Sept. 7 for what would be the state's largest complex offering indoor and outdoor sport shooting.

The purpose is to encourage more people to hunt and engage in shooting sports, said Dave Schad, the DNR's fish and wildlife director. Such a complex also would be likely to host national competitions.

"The need for additional shooting sports opportunities is pretty evident in the state. We were asked by the state Legislature to take a look at this," Schad said.

Outdoors, patrons would have a choice of 10 skeet fields, 30 traps fields, a 15-station rifle range, an archery range with more than 22 stations and a five-station pistol range. Indoor firearm and archery ranges are planned, as well.

The complex also would have a 90-acre campground that could accommodate 232 motor homes.

Rep. David Dill, DFL-Crane Lake, who authored the site search legislation, said he feels it's important to keep connected to the outdoors.

"Our youth hunter recruitment continues to suffer. It's not just Minnesota; it's all states," he said. "We are trying to bring people into hunting and into shooting sports. You can't expect people to continue to participate when there isn't opportunity."

But Rep. Alice Hausman, DFL-St. Paul, who chairs the House capital investment committee, said she was surprised -- and unhappy -- to learn of the site search.

Looking through old spending bills, she found $300,000 tucked into a 2009 budget-balancing bill to solicit interest in the complex.

"We were cutting everything in that bill and what we gave cash to was a shooting range?" Hausman said. "It's something a segment in our Legislature gets away with all the time. There is this kind of privileged group of sportsmen who get money when nobody else does."

There hasn't yet been discussion about how to pay for the complex. For now, supporters want to see if a site can be found.

A way of life

Chuck Niska, the state's shooting range coordinator, said that while some might see a shooting complex as serving an exclusive sporting niche, such a complex would be an ideal place to introduce young people to hunting sports and teach them safe gun handling.

"If we don't get them involved with this, they never likely will get involved in it," Niska said. "Hunting and shooting as part of the American way of life is going to go away."

Minnesota has about 575,000 hunters, the DNR figures. That's about 13 percent of the population, down from a steady 16 percent participation rate from the mid-1980s to mid-1990s, according to an October 2009 DNR report on fishing and hunting trends.

The highest percentage of state hunters live in northwestern Minnesota, where 26 percent of the population hunted in 2008. In the metro area, hunters made up only 6.9 percent of the population.

Hunters are important to the state because they control the deer population, said Jay Johnson, hunter recruitment and retention officer. Hunting license fees pay for land and wildlife conservation, he added.

The Minnesota Trap Shooting Association, with more than 1,000 members, is enthusiastic about a large metro shooting complex.

"We want people to come out,'' association president Glen Lonneman said. "It's like building a new stadium. It's new. It's nice. So everybody goes.''

'Gold standard facility'

The state already has a $2.5 million indoor shooting range: the Minnesota Shooting Sports and Education Center in Grand Rapids. It opened in January 2000 and had been envisioned as a world-class center for training and competition. But it has been closed for the past year and a half, and now the DNR is considering turning it into office space.

"We never got the use and participation in events that allowed us to generate enough revenue to make it a viable facility," Schad said. "The idea behind the shooting center in Grand Rapids is a good one. It's just too far away."

A metro shooting complex, on the other hand, would succeed because it would be close to most of the state's population, Schad said. It also would have enough room for different kinds of shooting events, making it attractive for large national competitions.

"These facilities, for obvious reasons, can be controversial," he said. "There has been a lot of advancement in how to build them safely and deal with things like noise."

Three Rivers Park District board members entertained the idea of making land available but declined, saying they wouldn't devote 530 acres of park land for that purpose.

With the allocated money, an interested local government could do some initial planning to decide whether to pursue it, Schad said. "We would work with them to secure the necessary approvals and funding to develop it," he said.

A 530-acre complex would be a "gold standard facility," Schad said. If communities were interested in a smaller center, he said, the DNR could work with them to identify what was most important.

Dill said many states are building large, multi-discipline shooting centers as an economic draw. A shooting range in Sparta, Ill., was built by the state at a reclaimed strip mine and drew thousands of youths for a national competition recently, he said.

"It's the [DNR's] job to go out now and look for a site and see which communities might be interested in participating in something like this," Dill said.

[FJ540]

Tell them about the metrodome plan. I bet we could fit all of that except the completely unnecessary camping and RV crap into a downtown facility that's already unwanted.

[1911fan]

TCAAP

[FJ540]

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ ... cities.htm

You might be on to something there. Even if you just used the Army parts, you'd probably have the size goals met and the buildings might be able to be refurb'd for some of the proposed uses.

[cmj685]

TCAAP

The problem with that facility, as you know, is that it is completely surrounded on all four sides with heavy residential housing. There would be significant noise problems, it seems to me, for tens of thousands of residents--all of whom, in this case, were there first. Furthermore, with about 3 different cities and several agencies (I have lost track by now) all owning chunks of it, getting the permissions and permits would be a nightmare, I should think.

[1911fan]

TCAAP

The problem with that facility, as you know, is that it is completely surrounded on all four sides with heavy residential housing. There would be significant noise problems, it seems to me, for tens of thousands of residents--all of whom, in this case, were there first. Furthermore, with about 3 different cities and several agencies (I have lost track by now) all owning chunks of it, getting the permissions and permits would be a nightmare, I should think.

True, except, there is a gun range (2 actually within a mile, and being hard alongside 35W, if it were place right, the noise issue would be easily hidden in the traffic noise. Historically it was a gun range, (155 and 90 mm cannon were fired their regularly thru the end of the Vietnam war, so one could make an argument (futilely probably) that it is a grandfathered in range. You are not going to find another spot like it in the whole metro area, where being right alongside a major freeway, ambient noise could mask a lot of whats going on there, Better built shooting stations would help mask a lot of the rifle noise and shotgun noise is heard all around there anyway from Metro until dusk and past year round.

[mnglocker]

How about this for an answer:

Dear DNR, the state is broke, quit pissing money away on make-work jobs. Quit being so intrusive and restrictive and people will get back into the sport.

-Love, mnglocker.

[nyffman]

Yeah, since the State has lots of extra cash sitting around, why not? I mean, without hardly looking, they found $300,000 just like I find change in the sofa cushions. With a little effort, who knows, they might find millions, even billions. This sounds like a perfectly legitimate way for the State to spend tax dollars. It's not fair to the residents out of the Twin Cities area, though. Maybe they should also look into 6 or 7 regional shooting ranges also, just to be fair.

[DeanC]

I figured this would be paid for with that stupid tax and state constitutional amendment everyone voted on themselves recently. Or, did we already let them funnel that into the general fund to pay for more teachers?

[bstrawse]

If this comes from that new tax, then I can live with this (though I hate that new tax)

If this is coming out of the general fund, I can't support this. This is entirely wrong time to be spending money on much of anything new, in my mind.
b

[Belgiboy]

If this comes from that new tax, then I can live with this (though I hate that new tax)

If this is coming out of the general fund, I can't support this. This is entirely wrong time to be spending money on much of anything new, in my mind.
b

I agree, no matter how much I would love 30 additional trap fields in the metro area.

If it would be able to bring in a major shooting competition... then it would be pretty much self supporting. I think the Grand American is pretty much up for grabs right now.

[Shipyard]

22 archery stations and 5 pistol stations?

turn it all into one huge tacti-cool running course. help all the chubby kids loose some weight too.

[DeanC]

I'm not a state budget expert, but I think the DNR is mostly self-funding and gets very little appropriation from the general fund.

[s10trev]

TCAAP

My backyard is across the street from TCAAP. I think I would be OK with it. But I also don't think it would ever happen. When I go to Cub or Home Depot nearby Metro Gun Club, I don't think the noise is overly loud or intrusive.

[lenny7]

I'm pretty convinced that anything the state builds will be overpriced. Whatever it is, private industry could build it for half the cost, and operate it for half the cost. If the fees end up being competitive, it will only be because the DNR is subsidizing it. And watch, it will be a no-lead facility. Maybe if it brought in some national competitions (the reason for the campground), maybe it would have some payback, but I have my doubts.

I understand what they're trying to do with building one big-ass facility, but I'd rather see them spread the money out and build smaller facilities around the state. Actually I'd rather see them just stay out of it all together.

If they do end up building this thing, they need more pistol & rifle lanes. The skeet & trap fields can accommodate 200 shooters at a time (I think skeet has 5 stations, I've never shot it). The rifle and pistol can only accommodate 20 at a time. The only national competitions you're going to host with those numbers are shotgun competitions.